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Monkey Puzzle #8 has been unleashed!
For a free sample, click here!
Available for $12.95 on the Monkey Puzzle Website and Amazon.com!
We’re also featuring a special $2.00 digital download (PDF) of the entire issue – check the website for details!
Here’s what people are saying about Monkey Puzzle:
“Reading Monkey Puzzle is the literary journal equivalent to listening to Jim Morrison scream ‘COME ON!’ before the guitar solo in ‘Five To One,’ or watching a bad-assed version of Kurt Russell murdering a 1980’s computer chess machine with a glass of mid-shelf whiskey in John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing,’ or driving to Woody Creek Tavern for the first time and spending the entire afternoon getting loaded while sitting in Hunter Thompson’s old chair. Nate Jordon and Crew have a unique talent for collecting works that will make you want to dance, scream, rage, get drunk, affectionately latch onto the genitals of that special someone who’s genitals need a good latching on to, climb a mountain, change the world for the better, compose an opera and donate blood—all at the same time.”
- Rob Geisen, Author of Paper Thin and Beautiful Graveyards
“Have you ever paddled deep into the waters of the Lower Orinoco in Venezuela and looked longingly over the side of your oak dugout and there under the jungled canopy stuck your arm to the elbow into the muddy freshwater and felt the needle-teethed caribes suckling and gnawing at your digits until you lifted your hand and waved your bloody bone fingers at your face, blowing them kisses from your ecstatic mouth? Reading Monkey Puzzle is a lot like that. Reading Monkey Puzzle is like plunging into dark waters needleworked with piranhas, and coming away raw and stripped and blowing and laughing. Reading Monkey Puzzle is like discovering a honeyed mystery deep at the heart of your most cherished bloodied escapade.”
- Shane Joaquín Jiménez, Author of It Can Be That Way Still
“In a time when the written word is being pushed around by trendy-leather-pouch-eye-burning-Kindles, a human being can still pick up a book that is just as enthralling to read as it is to peer at. With poetry and prose that tickles the brain, teamed with photography that jumps off the page, Monkey Puzzle will continue to grow uninhibitedly. Monkey Puzzle, along with its founder and editor Nate Jordon, has cemented its place in a long history of rebellious publications.”
- Daniel Dissinger, Editor of In Stereo Press
Monkey Puzzle #8 features the following works of prose:
“excerpt from Visions of Neal” by John Allen Cassady
“excerpt from Searching for Suzi” by Nancy Stohlman
“A Real Sweet Thing” by Shane Joaquín Jiménez
“Snow Globes Are the Bane of Our Existence” by Leah Rogin-Roper
“Hills Like Golden Arches” by Dale Bridges
“excerpt from The Whole to The Parts” by Paige Doughty
“Z-Eros” by Paul A. Toth
“So, this is the beginning…” by Lily Scarborough Heehs
“Slowly Ringing Bells” by Ian Washburn
“War Wounds” by Stan Flukinger
“Getting Published” by Allan Richard Shapiro
“Van Gogh” by Lori Heflin
and the following works of poetry:
“Theosophy” by Tim Skeen
“4/4/09″ by Irene Joyce
“8th Week” by Violet Monday
“11:11 Didn’t Work” by Jonathan Montgomery
“black transistor series” by Michael Bernstein
“Classifications of Space-time Intervals…” by LaVonne Natasha Caesar
“The Coda” by Naomi Lore
“Coffee Shop Poetry” by Carlos Ponce-Melendez
“Danchel” by Mark Lamoruex
“Espresso” by Naomi Lore
“extermination of boredom” by Aimee Herman
“Graffiti on Mission Street” by Gerard Morel
“I Hope You Got a Copy of the Memo, Louise” by Barbara Price
“Impasse” by William Benton
“Isaac Newton’s Sister” by Karen Douglass
“Island Theory” by Andrew McEwan
“Jazz Toad” by Carolyn Zaikowski
“Letter Redacted” by Adrienne Dodt
“Musical Score for Desire” by Megan Burns
“My Dishy Canadian Cousin” by Corey Mesler
“No Apologies” by Olatundji Akpo-Sani
“Pacific” by Dennis Caswell
“A Phone Booth in Boylston” by William Doreski
“A Photograph of Rilke” by Barry Spacks
“Photographs” by Leticia Luna
“Possession” by Jessey Nickells
“Sanctuary” by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta
“Sea Blanket” by Leticia Luna
“Side Effects” May Include by Howie Good
“Something Comforting There Is” by Matt Dennison
“Speaking of Tehran on a Train” by Jasmine Marshall Armstrong
“Standing Naked” by Olatundji Akpo-Sani
“This is Not about Performing Anal” by Get In the Car, Helen
“Tipsy Love Song to Charlie Parker” by Emily Owens
“To a God Undiscovered” by Diane Klammer
“Walloon at Walgreens” by Lois Leveen
with photography by:
Alexandra Parsons
Cecilia Kunstadter
Jennifer Hamilton
Lily Scarborough Heehs
Michael Filimowicz
Nate Jordon
Peter Schwartz
Philip Meersman
Stacy Walsh
and artwork by:
Alex Nodopaka
Diane Klammer’s Shooting the Moon received a nice review from Midwest Book Review:
“Poetry has never been the exclusive domain of professional poets. Shooting the Moon is a fine collection of poetry from biologist, psychologist, and mother who provides many insights through her works as well as entertainment. A work of the heart, Shooting the Moon is well worth considering. ‘On the Bus’: Don’t push on the doors./They can break/Then nobody goes anywhere.//Americans remain in a hurry to pile up, collect what they have no time for./Then they sell, recycle, throw away, ands burn.//’Only when the doors of perception are cleansed/can they be seen as they truly are, infinite.’//Don’t push on the planet./It can break./Then nobody goes anywhere.”
Congrats Diane!
Shooting the Moon is available for $16.95 from the Monkey Puzzle Press website and Amazon.com. There’s not many left, so order yours before we run out of stock!
*note: this book was so bad, I had to post this review – NJ*
“If you’ve read one story, you’ve read them all. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is 300+ pages of a redundant play-by-play of the same scenario: protagonist gets blackout drunk, typically pukes or craps himself, gets laid. I say ‘protagonist’ and not ‘Tucker’ because though the author claims these stories are true, there’s no way in Hell they are. Sure, there is some semblance of truth to these stories, but many of the details are impossible. But that’s not the worst strike against this book. The worst strike is the writing itself. Whoever edited this book (Ah, I’ll go ahead and say it: Jeremie Ruby-Strauss) needs to be fired post-haste. To allow switched tenses in the same paragraph over and over again is clearly not artistic license, because the author is not that good of a writer, but only one thing: bad writing. Then there’s the fact the author only a few times describes with any sense of detail what a person looks like or what the environment looks like; girls are ‘hot’ faceless mirages with ‘big tits’ and everything takes place in a ‘bar’ or ‘club.’ Those are just a few examples among many. As for the bigger picture, let’s go deeper. It’s a shame the author, who is clearly intelligent with a few noble intellectual pursuits, uses those two tools as weapons to pursue his sociopathic aims without regard to anyone or anything except, as he states, personal gratification. The author claims, ‘I do contribute to humanity in one very important way: I share my adventures with the world.’ That’s like saying Hitler contributed to humanity because he wrote Mein Kampf, except for one major difference: Hitler’s a better writer. The protagonist claims, ‘I’m awesome,’ and other sycophantic congratulatory statements, and this comes off as funny to the half-wit frat boys and cute to the Hannah Montana fans that occupy most sorority houses, but it waxes dumb and immature to anyone over the age of twenty-three. Is the author therefore holding up a giant mirror to show everyone the new American culture of Dumb? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Yet the fact this book is a New York Times Bestseller is definitely a reflection of such; if not, it’s clearly a sign of the manipulation of The New Dumb. The protagonist/author claims he’s committed himself to writing. I challenge him to do so. This will require an immense amount of reading and writing, otherwise the author will continue writing what amounts to grocery lists. But if this is what our young culture likes to read (which isn’t surprising in this age of half-literate twenty-somethings who only understand the hyphenated language of txt msging ), then Yahweh, Muhammed, Buddha, Shiva, and Rocky Balboa save us all. LOL.
If you enjoy reading about a character who’s had everything provided for him (money, education, way too much free time—he laments the multiple divorces and marriages of his parents as being the reason he’s an asshole, but how lame—this is the 21st century, who hasn’t come from a broken home?), then this book is for you. Be warned: you will find no poetry here—in the words, the experience, nothing. And as for the claim—’My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole’—get it right; ‘Tucker’ is not an asshole, he’s just a jackass.
Perhaps this diatribe has made you want to read the book. Perhaps you now want to sleep with ‘Tucker Max.’ Go ahead, join the herd. I hear the beer is ‘rodeo cold’ in Idiot Hell.”
- Nate Jordon -
We had a great time last night at the launch party – thanks to everyone who came and made it a special occasion!
Kona Morris introduces Nancy Stohlman.
Nancy takes the stage!
Nancy reads Chapter 6:
Nancy Reads Stripper Tip #12:
Nancy Reads Chapter 7:
Nancy Reads Stripper Tip #17:
Nancy reads Chapter 12:
Nancy signs books and posters for fans:
Nancy and Monkey-in-Chief Nate Jordon.
