is an extension of a biannual journal of poetry, fiction, art and criticism with a mission to publish challenging writing and art distinguished by idiosyncrasy and intelligence rather than by allegiance with camps, schools, or cliques. Fence has published works by some of the most esteemed contemporary writers (Alice Notley, John Ashbery, Lynne Tillman, Rick Moody, Robert Coover) as well as excellent work by the completely unknown. It is part of our mission to support young or unestablished writers who might otherwise have difficulty being recognized because their work doesn't appeal to either the mainstream or to accepted modes of experimentation. We hold these more established writers up as examples of distinguished originality, a fence we want to sit on. provides expanded, durable exposure to poets and writers whose work is excellent, challenging, and truly original. Fence Books has so far concentrated on poetry, but by Fall 2003 plans to include fiction titles in its growing list. Fence Books is edited by Rebecca Wolff (poetry) and Ben Marcus (fiction). At present Fence Books is a self-selecting publisher; manuscripts come to our attention through our contests and through editors' investigations. We hope to become open to unsolicited submissions of poetry and fiction manuscripts in the near future. The Alberta Prize is an annual series administered by Fence Books in conjunction with the Alberta duPont Bonsal Foundation. The Alberta Prize offers publication of a first or second book of poems by a woman, as well as a $5,000 cash prize. Our second prize series is the Fence Modern Poets Series. This contest is open to poets of either gender and at any stage in their career, be it a first book or fifth, and offers a $1,000 cash prize in addition to book publication. For more information about either prize, visit or send an SASE to Fence Books/[Name of Prize], 14 Fifth Avenue, #1A, New York, NY 10011.
		Fall 2003 Sky Girl Rosemary Griggs Sky Girl is an answer, within an echo, to an earlier generation's Coffee Tea or Me legacy. A fierce and savvy writer, Griggs is by turns whimsical and elegiac, and always very much of this moment. --Brighde Mullins As spare as a fresh contrail overhead, as tender as a quiet moment along a river. Wry, sexy, introspective, sad, and all the while alert to her absurd perch on the first civilian line of defense against terror, here is a voice that brings sharply forward one uniform we may have taken for granted. "Coffee, tea," or, better, let the attendant as poet usher us into the attentive world of Sky Girl. With a fine use of found materials (a blue god with three eyes and two fangs), striking images ("bare, bronze feet dangling"), deft turns on old stories ("No thank you son, I've just eaten"), and sad songs ("eyes that dimmed the lake"), Rosemary Griggs, who is "not sure you can have a secret and / also have love" has learned that "when you're poor you have to be magical," as many of these absolutely unpretentious and hard won poems prove to be. --David Hamilton In her wonderful first collection of poems, many of which trace the post-9/11 experiences of a flight attendant named Kimberlie, Rosemary Griggs shows an astonishing ability to represent the subtleties of a mind in fear. In the poem "DEN-EWR," Kimberlie explains to a pilot that her fear of flying is comparable to wildebeests on the Discovery Channel who must cross a crocodile infested river "knowing a few of them will be eaten but the majority of them will make it." In another poem, she takes an unexpected comfort from the squareness of a patch of grass on which she has chosen to lie down. In its existential accuracy and glamour, the book reminds me of Knut Hamsun's novel Hunger, or the perilous emotional landscapes of Peter Handke stories. Griggs's fictive detail, accuracy of idiom, and offbeat cadences lend themselves to the long line: "It's that you keep saying you're tired makes me want to weep" or "I said please tell me I won't be mad at you but I need to know as a girl to a girl please help me out here." This is that rare book in which the sentences are as beautifully observed as life. --Paul Hoover Spring 2003 Nota Martin Corless-Smith Dear Reader, take care of this book. It’s important and amazing—a vast conversation and meditation—an investigation into the “stupend symptom” of the self in poetry and writing. “I AM NO FREE AGENCY,” the text tells us: “terror for myself and those dear; “ “stiff vein into a nether heart.” The language of this book changes musically from the 17th century to the contemporary; the punctuation and grammar shift necessarily and curiously. Lyric quatrains appear and reappear suggesting a long poem struggling for completion. Sorrow and brightness fall among the words. A search for the self here undertakes the discovery of itself in our own time, when political, social, and religious gridirons no longer hold on to us. We are disjunctives: “My story is as everyone’s/ though for that seldom heard.” Among the many quotations within the conversations of this book, I think the courage of it is especially indebted to the meditations of Sir Thomas Browne and Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, placed so to speak, alongside Wittgenstein’s linguistic edge. Urne Buriall: “But the iniquity of oblivion blindely scattereth her poppy.” --Robin Blaser Father of Noise Anthony McCann Anthony McCann seeks out the elusive Other with all the conviction and raucous self-loathing of a mad saint. Eroticized, debunked, adored and despised, the sayer of these incantations ventures fearlessly into the known, buoyed only by the persistence of the body in its current manifestation. His penetrating, pervasive doubt lends a perverse clarity to the journey, and lends shape to the spirit world. “I approach the house in tiger pants/ thinking of surrender and of holding on.” VISIT WWW.FENCEBOOKS.COM FOR THESE TITLES AND OTHER DEALS