Mike Sonksen turns the attention of his regular column L.A. Letters to Les Figues and two of our titles: Mathew Timmons’ The New Poetics and Melissa Buzzeo’s For Want and Sound:

Les Figues Press is an L.A.-based small press that I first discovered in Fall 2011 in the small library at Occupy L.A. on the northern grassy side of City Hall…I saw their book, The New Poetics, by Mathew Timmons and thought the book looked innovative and progressive…[it] is a nonstop barrage of sentences tied together by the new: ‘The New Movements, The New Myth, The New Names, The New Narrative.’ Jumping from new to new all through the alphabet for 110 pages, this is prose poetry on a hyper level…Theory and poetic history appear throughout the work, but just when it seems to get over-theoretical, the humorous and absurd make their way into his narrative in short pieces like, ‘The New Motherfuckers’ and ‘The New Rejection Letter.’

Check out KCET’s L.A. Letters for the full review and Sonksen’s celebration of poetry pioneers and publishers.