"A mighty object to behold . . . enchanting . . . a complicated, intriguing development in the power struggle between the analog and the digital."—Los Angeles Review of Books
"The Third Man project originated from a weekly poetry series in Nashville that attracted both ends of the poetry spectrum—established national award winners (Pulitzer Prize finalists Dale Ray Phillips and Adrian Matejka) and complete unknowns such as local bartenders, teachers and even a mortician. Both are side-by-side in the book for a purpose."—Chicago Tribune
Language Lessons: Volume I is a box-set including two vinyl LPs of music and recitations, a hardcover book with 300+ pages of literary fiction, biography, and poetry, and five frameable broadsides.
 This anthology includes over 20 award winning and/or nominated contemporary poets and authors such as Dale Ray Phillips, a Pulitzer Prize nominee in fiction, C.D. Wright, a National Book Award finalist in poetry, and Adrian Matejka, a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry. And, interestingly enough, many in the book will be published for the first time in their lives.
FULL LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS: Jake Adam York, C. D. Wright, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Stephanie Ann Whited, Sharon Weise, Chet Weise, Calliope Blue Watford-Edelson, Vox Arcana, Adam Vines Ken Vandermark, William Tyler, Paige Taggart, Ben Swank, Janaka Stucky, Steve Stern, Sampson Starkweather, Frank Stanford, Zachary Schomburg, Sheila Sanderson, Daniel Lucca Pujol, Benjamin Prosser, Dale Ray Phillips, Marquise Person, Pamela Johnson Parker, Mystery Twins, Ben Mirov, William W. Miller, Wayne Miller, Joanne Merriam, Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, Brooke D. McCarley, Adrian Matejka, Tim Kerr, Paul "Wine" Jones, TJ Jarrett, JP5, Carolyn Hembree, Richard Hell, Noah Eli Gordon, Joshua Gillis, Tav Falco, Destruction Unit, Kendra DeColo, Larry O. Dean, Spencer Connell, Jem Cohen, Carlton Melton, Ben Burr, Sommer Browning, Nickole Brown, besmilr brigham, Rachel Briggs, Gaylord Brewer, Russell Brakefield, Dan Boehl, Jim Blanchard, Pinckney Benedict, Nicky Beer, Brian Barker, Rachel Ballard, Butch Anthony

Language Lessons: Volume I

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Third Man Books

"Stucky's verse has the power of the best East European poets—some of his poems seem to be perfect, magnificent, and instantly anthologizable. He is a forceful, cogent, incisive phrase-maker."—Bill Knott
"The yearning in these poems is awash in dense, spiritual sexuality buffeted by time and the mishandling of promises and breakable bonds."—apt 
The Truth Is We Are Perfect contains fifty-four lyrics exploring the loss of oneself through the loss of an other, and how we seek to recreate ourselves in that absence. Stucky journeys into nothingness and, consequently, into awareness. His meditative sensibilities and minimalist style create ritualized poems acting as spells—transcribed to be read aloud and performed in the service of realizing that which we seek to become: "Because I love a burning thing / I made my heart a field of fire."
Janaka Stucky is the publisher of Black Ocean as well as the annual poetry journal Handsome. He is the author of two chapbooks: Your Name Is The Only Freedom, and The World Will Deny It For You. His poems have appeared in such journals as Denver Quarterly, Fence and North American Review, and his articles have been published by the Huffington Post and thePoetry Foundation. He is a two-time National Haiku Champion and in 2010 he was voted "Boston's Best Poet" in the Boston Phoenix.

The Truth Is We Are Perfect

Self-Help

Stucky, Janaka

Relationships

"[A] provocative reinterpretation of poetry's function...Here is devastating meta-poetry for the board gameplaying, smartphone-scrolling masses, both accessible and enlightened."Publisher's Weekly“Starkweather is creating a living poetry.” ―C.D. Wright, author of One With Others, winner 2011 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award
I am of my times and you screengrab out of ancient nowhere, is the title of a poem from Starkweather's second collection, PAIN: The Board Game. The title perfectly captures both his contemporariness and his empathetic treatment of our most primal conditions: "dis- / appointment / &amp; misery / &amp; helplessness / &amp; suffering / &amp; pain / &amp; fear."
As he deploys the #trending and vintage lexicons of technology and pop culture with the depth and ease of a true lyricist, Starkweather pushes his poems into the territory of universal affect and risky humanity, to the root of our desire to connect. This is the contemporary poem that, just after it has "Shazamed / your orgasm" resurrects "the rough magic / of bodies / illuminating / the lack / of any / limitation / when one." Starkweather's unyielding, funny, luminous poetry is a brand new classic.
PAIN:The Board Game is the first analog and online interactive book of poetry with 160 pages of poems that are as visual as they are readable and includes 15 color illustrations by artist Jon-Michael Frank.
 3 shots to the chest at the arcade Sadness is my favorite video game I am its hero the little man with facial hair scampering through pixilated cities looking for clues and accumulating shit without knowing why trying not to be crushed or free fall into the not-world’s dark as 8-bit clouds scroll across the pre- programmed sky it’s exhausting but I take it next level I am happy here it feels real and I can always die

PAIN: The Board Game

Humor & Entertainment

Starkweather, Sampson

Humor

"The big event in poetry for 2015 will likely be the long-awaited resurrection of Frank Stanford, a legendary badass from Arkansas, much of whose poetry has been unavailable since his suicide at the age of 29 in 1978 Stanford was a hell of a metaphor-maker and simile-slinger, and could cast a spell of extreme intensity with a flick of his wrist.”NPR.org
"His love poems can sound like the cry of an angel falling backward through an open window, to borrow Dwight Yoakam’s line about Roy Orbison’s voice. . . . Mr. Stanford could lose his heart without blowing his cool.” New York Times
"It is astounding to me that I was not even aware of this accomplished and moving poet. There is a great deal of pain on the poems, but it is a pain that makes sense, a tragic pain whose meaning rises from the way the poems are so firmly molded and formed from within."James Wright
Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford Archives is 200 pages of unpublished poems, photographs, artwork, and facsimiles of typesheets, handwrtten drafts, and letters. A preface is written by editor Michael Wiegers and an appreciation by Stanford's friend Steve Stern. The book also includes downloadable audio of special guests reading Stanford's poetry. Hidden Water complements Copper Canyon Press's definitive Frank Stanford collection What About This andis a must for any lover of Stanford.
My wallet was thick as the bible I carried around Graphs of Elvis Presley John Lee Hooker Brigitte Bardot and the sodbuster Burns I thought up nom-de-plumes in the outhouse and sent off for things cryptic ads I used stamps that made the postmaster ask where I was from
Born in 1948, Frank Stanford was a prolific poet known for his originality and ingenuity. He has been dubbed "a swamprat Rimbaud" by Lorenzo Thomas and "one of the great voices of death" by Franz Wright. He grew up in Mississippi, Tennessee, and then Arkansas, where he lived for most of his life and wrote many of his most powerful poems. Stanford died in 1978. He authored over ten books of poetry, including eight volumes in the last seven years of his life.

Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford Archives

Stanford, Frank

Described by some as erotica for feminists,” and enemy to family values,” DeColo’s poems convulse with desire and a longing for connection. Her work speaks to the particular loneliness of watching Fox News after you’ve masturbated too many times, depleted and filled with fascination and terror. Balancing tenderness with ferocity, cynicism with wonder, DeColo’s poems disrupt and reclaim misogynistic language, creating a lyricism that dazzles and swoons, hoping to leave a stain deep enough to last.
"The poems in Kendra DeColo’s extraordinary second collection, My Dinner With Ron Jeremy, live in the sinuous space between want and propriety, fantasy and the 'Must Be 18' button on the poetry portal. There’s love here, too, and John Coltrane, and abandonment in all its necessary circumstances, but sex is both brilliant talisman and vacant harbinger through it all. This often humorous, always provocative book puts a neon backlight on the filaments between what we have, what we have to do, and what we wish we could do, whether we can rewind and watch it again or not. "Adrian Matejka, Author of The Big Smoke, a 2014 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
"Marvelous poetry poems that would make great feature films.”Ron Jeremy, Actor
"Sex-positive feminist verse... DeColo manages to coax beauty and meaning from the absurd aching morass of human existence. It’s not every writer who can emerge from these corners with anything approaching grace, much less deft and bracing poems such as these."The Nashville Scene
"[DeColo's] work is ferocious and tender, demolishing patriarchal language and using the fragments to build riotous new worlds."Bitch Magazine

My Dinner with Ron Jeremy

Literature & Fiction

DeColo, Kendra

Poetry

Salaam treats words like the seductive weapons they are. She wields them to weave fierce, gorgeous stories that stroke your sensibilities, challenge your preconceptions and leave you breathless with their beauty.”Nalo Hopkinson, Author of the Nebula nominated novel The New Moon's Arms
Kiini Ibura Salaam’s short stories (and the characters who inhabit them) are vital, fantastic in all senses of the word, audacious and tender.”Kelly Link, author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated collection Get In Trouble
 In this eagerly-awaited collection, Kiini Ibura Salaam continues her exploration of the dark, the sensual, and the mysterious with fiction that disturbs, delights, and dazzles. The five stories and one novella collected in When the World Wounds examine the tumultuous nature of the human condition through such wild imaginings as sensual encounters with deer, escapism in a dystopic prison, and volcano women. In The Taming,” a lupine creature is trapped by beasts whose nefarious nature is beyond their prey’s understanding. In Hemmie’s Calenture,” a woman escaping enslavement is thrust into a war between gods. The Pull of the Wing” is the prequel to Salaam’s wildly popular Of Wings, Nectar, and Ancestors trilogy. Because of the Bone Man” transports readers to the desolate landscape of post-Katrina New Orleans and the struggle of the city’s culture bearers to carry on. A welcome follow-up to Salaam’s award-winning Ancient, Ancient, When the World Wounds is perceptive and engaging as it examines our world’s callous and perilous landscapes while tickling the imagination and startling the senses.
Kiini Ibura Salaam is a natural-born storyteller and a gorgeous writer who chooses her characters and words with the care and skill of a poet. Her stories are transformative, wise and vivid with the quality of fantasy and fable. I loved reading this!”Sherre Renée Thomas, Editor of the World Fantasy Award winning anthology Dark Matter: Reading the Bones 
Salaam’s collection introduces readers to alternate worlds built around magic, sensuality, sexuality, and the search for emotional comfort, however tenuous. Salaam’s unusual settings and lonely characters will call to readers who hunger for sex, identity, or just a place to belong.”Publishers Weekly 
Kiini Ibura Salaam's first collection Ancient, Ancient (Aqueduct Press, 2012) won the James Tiptree Award. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

When the World Wounds

Salaam, Kiini Ibura

United States

TOTAL CHAOS: The Story of The Stooges / As Told by Iggy Pop is the first time the story of this seminal band has been told entirely in Pop's own words. Author Jeff Gold and contributor Johan Kugelberg, noted music historians and collectors, spent two days with Pop at his Miami home, sharing with him their extensive Stooges collection and interviewing the legendary singer. Pop's candid, bare-all responses left them with the almost unbelievable tale of the band he founded-the alternately tragic and triumphant story of a group who rose from youth, fell prey to drugs, alcohol, and music biz realities, collapsed and nearly 30 years later reformed, recording and touring to great acclaim. In 2010 The Stooges, credited with having invented punk rock, were inducted into the Rock &amp; Roll Hall of Fame. Their continuing influence can be felt today in the shape and sound of rock-n-roll music. "Gasp at the awe inspiring memorabilia and frank talk in Total Chaos: The Story of The Stooges/As Told By Iggy Pop" Mojo Magazine
"Tells the band’s revolutionary story through many never-before-published photos and extensive interviews(and) contributions from Johnny Marr, Josh Homme, Dave Grohl, Joan Jett and Jack White." Rolling Stone
"A fantastic new booka must-read for both diehard fans and anyone who wants to learn first-hand from Pop what it was like from the inside looking out in one of the seminal bands of the post-’60s era." Esquire

TOTAL CHAOS: The Story of the Stooges As Told by Iggy Pop

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

LIFE IS A RIP OFF: THE COMPLETE BOOK is 404 pages and 12 months of record reviews―one record a day, every day, for one year. Yes, John “Inzane" Olson aka Inzane Johnny of Wolf Eyes aka American Tapes did that. And he reviewed everything from death metal demo cassettes to the Staples Singers' gospel. Enter into the OLZONE and find out about music you've never known, bands from places that you've never heard, and then read his review of classic rock cornerstones such as KANSAS. Reading LRIP will make you re-realize why blues is relevant, why every punk band in America matters, why jazz is good for the heart, and metal will always ride by your side. "To write music op-ed this good, you have to tap the primordial sap sack, to butterfly stroke the ancient ooze of tune begatment, cave dwell with the knuckle draggers, scratch symbols into the dirt with the freaks and make it rain. He do and it did."―Henry Rollins "[Life is a Rip Off] is the best way [John Olson] can add another cubist layer to the sound and visuality he’s already presented for the last twenty or so years. He’s sharing something the people who don’t know him personally don’t get enough of―his textual, syntactical brain, stained as it is with dollar-store spray paint."― Ben Hell Hall, Detroit artist. "When John agreed to write a record review a day, back in 20xx, I wasn’t too keen on the idea. Not because I didn’t think he could do it - but that I knew he would do it, even if it became a years-long all-encompassing obsessive task."―Tovah Olson, The Dead Machines. "[John Olson] didn’t just introduce me to different worlds, the man introduced me to entire universes."―Bryan Ramirez, Killertrees Records

Life is a Rip Off

Olson, John.

History

Being of African American, Native American, and white descent, erica lewis’ poems recount her friends and family’sespecially the women'scomplex history with race, gender, and class in America, what it means to live with your own history, and how to move on. Each poem is framed by phrases from the lyrics of Stevie Wonder’s Motown records, but the poems themselves are homages to her women kin, friends, and other contemporary women poets. And the dominant motif is brokenness."By intertwining the public and the personal, Lewis's poems become a membrane through which pop culture permeates the most intimate experiences of selfhood." Publisher’s Weekly

mary wants to be a superwoman

Lewis, Erica

Parenting & Relationships

As the brain child of Jack White, The Blue Series started in tandem with Third Man Records in 2009. The series of 7-inch singles were recorded in the same studio, with the same producer (White), and photos taken in the same locale (TMR’s Blue Room). Whether Beck, Tom Jones, Stephen Colbert, the polarizing Insane Clown Posse, or the debut of previously unknown performers, The Blue Series epitomizes TMR/Jack White. With written contributions from David Fricke and every Blue Series recording artist, this is a behind-the-scenes documentation of the creative process behind a unique collection of song. And ALL the music will be included.

The Blue Series: The Story Behind the Color

Music

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