YesYes Books
The essence of Indie publishing is independence. And so we are free to publish always and only the work that keep our minds and hearts alive. For YesYes Books that means poetry and prose about sex and love, connection and despair, longing and living.
I want to smell the sound of you eating
My thighs, spread
Like warm apple butter
-from Heavy Petting by Gregory Sherl
We look for words that challenge and sooth; that make us cry and laugh and sweat and search for our partners so we can get busy. Life is a fucking shitstorm. At YesYes Books, we want to read words that are not afraid to live right in the middle of the tornado. And so that’s what we publish.
THE DRUGSTORE IS A VOLCANO
My pills are blackberry kissing.
My pills are tiny fish exploding
in the morning.
It's 1989 again every where
I look. My name is Bank Teller's
Red Button & I am happy
for lightning bugs & De La Soul
so happy my boundless affection
is not lost it's all right my boundless
affection is only bleeding.
I wish your knuckles.
I wish your alligator teeth
your barbed wire love a universe
where stars explode into congregations
of birds.
I wish your fists & exploding birds
& bruises on my lungs.
I wish your goodbye hand
was a derringer muzzled
into my gut.
-from Panic Attack, USA by Nate Slawson
But with freedom comes responsibility. Since Indie presses are small in size in terms of manpower and capital, we need to make up for that in quality and innovation and commitment so that we earn the trust our authors place in us. As a result, we seek the highest physical quality for the books YesYes produces. We use McNaughton & Gunn for printing. We obsess over paper choices. We seek cover art that can live as art by itself as it also engages in conversation with the poetry that lives inside. We want people to want to touch and hold our books and feel pleasure even before they crack the spine.
With freedom also comes the ability to take risks and think in new ways. At YesYes Books we have a strong commitment to innovation. This shows up in who we publish. Our first three print books are the first full collections for each author. We are also pushing forward a number of poets in our Poetry Shotsand Frequency series who do not have full books out yet such as Phillip B. Williams, Ocean Vuong, and Dana Guthrie Martin. We are pairing them with well-known voices including Bob Hicok, Dorothea Lasky, and Ben Mirov.
We Mark Time with Ceremonies
They roam. They build moats.
They build fierce men named Marcus
and quote them until we grow tired of listening
to quotes by men named Marcus.
They build women whose cunts we bedazzle.
We gather at the cunts but avoid
the anuses. But the anuses are free,
they tell us.
We aren’t listening.
We are living like cats now,
maximizing our time in the sun.
We are poets. We are all poets.
Poets is all we are or ever were.
-forthcoming POETRY SHOT by Dana Guthrie Martin
Innovation also shows up at YesYes Books through our attention to the electronic landscape. YesYes has been hugely blessed by the crazy work ethic and brilliant brain power of Thomas Patrick Levy. Not only is he a poet to swoon for (check out his chapbook Please Don’t Leave Me Scarlett Johanssonand his forthcoming I Don’t Mind if You’re Feeling Alone), he is a dynamite web developer and designer. We are about to roll out the first of three electronic-based poetry initiatives and we can’t wait to share!
To finish, how about one more spot of life in poetry.
from 30 30
I expect a bat to replace the bumblebee trapped between the window’s outside side and its smudged inside. This bat would not need to transform, would be content with its bat-self, it’s wide expanse of wing dependent on its knotted sternum, it’s small smashed face perfect in this weathered light.
-forthcoming POETRY SHOT by Metta Sáma
Has laoreet percipitur ad. Vide interesset in mei, no his legimus verterem. Et nostrum imperdiet appellantur usu, mnesarchum referrentur id vim.
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