In 2011, Publishing Genius Press released The Disinformation Phase, a slim volume of 60 or so poems by Chris Toll, who’s been called “the Emily Dickinson of Mars.” If you’ve been to Snowfort, you’ve seen the quote we have painted on two of the beams in the bookstore: “Love is so hard / And it’s all we came to do.” This line is from a Chris Toll poem in the book.
I won’t always be writing about Publishing Genius projects this month, but I’m doing so early on here to say that we are giving away copies of the book at Snowfort, for free, for anyone interested. They’re on the PG table just inside the door. Grab a copy and come back on April 25 at 2pm for a discussion of the book and a poetry writing workshop based on Toll’s inimitable style.
The magazine What Weekly said of The Disinformation Phase:
You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but just this once, let’s do exactly that. The landscape on the cover of this book depicts the surface of another planet. That planet is inhabited by a clown, a tiger, a giant amphibious creature … The poetry of Chris Toll is just as imaginatively populated as this tableau. It is populated by unusual imagery, from which the cover is derived, no doubt. The poetry is also populated by Toll’s startling inquisitions of the language. For example, in a poem entitled Why is Try in Poetry the question is posed: “why is love backwards in evolve?” The title and that line are just two examples, among many, where Toll playfully examines the presence of one word within another.
Toll died suddenly in 2012 at the age of 62. Before he died, he always told me to introduce him as “my friend, the ghost.” Here is a short, effective video of Toll at a reading in Baltimore:
Want more? Listen to this WYPR recording of Toll reading 25 tracks from the book:
Some related news — Buck Downs is working on a collected works anthology of Toll’s work. We’ll have copies in the store as soon as it’s available.