I could go on coming up with labels to attach. Every title put out by No Tell Books falls into several of these categories. Some of the books might be considered dark or wild, like Rebecca Loudon’s Cadaver Dogs. Most of the books are “playful,” like Lea Graham’s Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You or PF Potvin’s The Attention Lesson or Shafer Hall’s Never Cry Woof. Harlot was also probably the most obviously “spiritual” book, yet Hugh Behm-Steinberg’s Shy Green Fields, Laurel Snyder’s The Myth of the Simple Machines and my own God Damsel would fall into that category as well. Then again the press’ best-selling title, Harlot by Jill Essbaum, is formalist, something I don’t usually go for, yet I loved that book. Some of these authors and their books could be labeled “experimental,” such Bruce Covey’s Elapsing Speedway Organism and Glass is Really a Liquid or Karl Parker’s PERSONATIONSKIN and that might be what I lean towards. In the following years I published books by Jill Alexander Essbaum, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Shafer Hall, Laurel Snyder, Karl Parker, Lea Graham and myself. The authors published during the first year were Bruce Covey, PF Potvin, Rebecca Loudon and Ravi Shankar. There’s not one particular style or sensibility, but many overlapping, occasionally conflicting.

Like the magazine, and my personal tastes, the press was fairly eclectic and difficult to categorize. RL: I’m not sure how I would go about describing a “No Tell” book. And provide a poem from one of the books. NA: I was hoping you would say a little bit about the authors you have published. No Tell Motel was already a recognizable name by the time No Tell Books started and I only published books by poets who first appeared in the magazine, so another natural extension from the magazine. RL: First came No Tell Motel, a phrase on a t-shirt I bought when I was child (and oblivious to its implications) at mall gift shop called Heaven. After that I started publishing individual author collections. My trial-run was The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, an anthology I co-edited with Molly Arden. RL: After I started the online magazine No Tell Motel in 2004, publishing books seemed the obvious progression, something I always wanted to do. Tracy Danison, Paris correspondent (152).Moira Egan, European Correspondent (72).Mitch Sisskind - Correspondent at Large (398).Loren Goodman, Pacific Correspondent (26).Jim Cummins - Mid West Correspondent (110).Jill Alexander Essbaum - Coeur Despondent (68).Jenny Factor -West Coast Correspondent (72).

Jennifer Michael Hecht, The Lion and the Honeycomb (172).

Bombyonder by Reb Livingston