Atticus/Finch is honored to announce the release of our newest chapbook, Snow Sensitive Skin, a collaborative long-poem by San Francisco authors Taylor Brady and Rob Halpern. While Atticus/Finch commissioned this work back in 2005, the collaboration didn't begin in earnest until June of 2006, in the midst of the (most recent) martial conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Taking as their point of departure Lebanese musician and visual artist Mazen Kerbaj's composition "Starry Night" (see below for a link), an improvisation between Mazen and the Israeli airforce for "trumpet and bombs," the authors challenged themselves to face the violence of war with the deactivating non-force of the poem, drawing into stark contrast notions of responsibility, praxis, and the labor of poetry during times of war. The authors write in their acknowledgements, "if we want to give ourselves to a present that is something other than the debased 'now,' and to a future that will not have been terminal, every second language must be taken up as an act of love." As such, Brady and Halpern took the very notion of collaboration to task, demanding that the composition unfold together, in the same room, in real time, in order to undergo and occupy this second language (in all of its difficulty) in a present foreign to the terminal 'now.'
In the meantime, for those of us happily residing elsewhere, the book can be purchased now using credit card or check. And, as is the case with all Atticus/Finch books, this volume will sell out relatively quickly, so order while you've got it on your mind!
To obtain a copy, use your credit card at our website (www.atticusfinch.org <http://www.atticusfinch.org> )
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