Fictionaut Blog

Pittsburgh’s own Caketrain publishes gorgeous books and a journal designed to “submerge you in a birthing tank for gelatinous language monsters.” Issue 06 features work by a record number of Fictionauts, including Sara Levine, Jayne Pupek, Michael Kimball, Forrest Roth, Brian Foley, Kate Hill Cantrill, and Kim Chinquee.

We asked Caketrain publisher Joseph Reed to pick a favorite piece on Fictionaut, and he chose Lizzie Skurnick’s poem “You Could Marry Anyone.” Sez Joseph:

At Caketrain, we have adored Lizzie for years now, but her latest works are among her most incisive and attentive. The rarest of specimens, Lizzie not only acknowledges but engages an oft-forgotten poetic history of metric and sonic technique, all the while throwing her subjects into an unmistakably modern relief — exposing the heart, then dicing it into sharp and shapely slivers of verse.

As it happens, “You Could Marry Anyone” appears in the expanded edition of Lizzie’s Check-In, which Caketrain is releasing in 2009. Lizzie’s Shelf Discovery, a book of essays based on her acclaimed Fine Lines column at Jezebel, is coming out from HarperCollins in May.