I can’t stop thinking ab0ut MONKEY BARS.  It’s fucked up.  It’s egomaniacal.  I should not be so obsessed with my own book but I am.  I want everyone to buy it.  It’s weird.  I don’t even care if they read it or not.  It’s so beautiful.  It’s so hip and delightful to hold.  It’s like holding a bird.  That’s not true, I want everyone to buy and it and read it.  I go to bed and think about how I can come up with twelve things the next day to promote the book.  It’s so juvenile but so much fun.  It’s like putting a puzzle together that will never end.  I should start telling lies about it.  That I conceived of the poems in prison, that I rode the rails of America and wrote on birch bark, that I was a barker in a gypsy carnival, be like Bob Dylan.  I used to think, ah, let the poems speak for themselves, the world will come to them.  It don’t work that way.  Not now, anyway.  Hey, you, go buy the book!  I love you.

It’s been a year.  More than that.  But, here it is, MONKEY BARS.  Check it out.

A huge thank you to Pam Swisher for making a kick-ass trailer for MONKEY BARS.  Check it out here, trailer.  The book is officially comin’ out on Friday so we’re hyping the hell out of it.  There is a great interview with her, conducted by the founder of TYPECAST PUBLISHING, Jennifer Woods, about the making of the trailer.  Pam is a wickedly talented film maker and you should check out her other shorts at http://pamswisher.com/Home/Home.html.  Many excellent thanks, again.

It’s a bit early, but TYPECAST PUBLISHING, the cool cats who are putting out my second collection, MONKEY BARS, is about to up and run their new website. Jen Woods and Emily Kiefer are the mastermind creators of TYPECAST and I can’t send them enough love for putting this book out. Poetry is this labor of love kind of thing that’s been going on for a long time in my life and so when I was asked, by Jen, to send her a manuscript, I jumped at the chance. Her love of poetry is mind-boggling. Her vision of the poem in the world is even better. That it should be loved by all the people, all of the time, everywhere. Very egalitarian and open-hearted. That’s what this is all about, I suppose. Emily shares the same vein and has hooked me up, too, with her generosity and vision. She has been kind enough to create a website for me (www.matthewlippman.com) that is gorgeous. And so I hope you all get a chance to check TYPECAST out, my book, and all of their books to come. A force to be held close, these women and their venture. I feel blessed to be part of the whole enterprise, journey, sling shot of language and love that hurtles from the nooks, corners and platform that makes up TYPECAST PUBLISHING. Welcome and thanks.