Publisher Description

Mark Baumer wrote like he was trying to have a consciousness, like he's trying to avoid feeling anything; then it's like he's working really hard to feel more. It's like he's a child of the internet plus Wendell Berry, an anti-folk folksy speaker navigating the industries of gigs and professional writing culture. Baumer's life was ended by an SUV in January of 2017 while he was walking barefoot across America for the second time to draw attention to climate change. Baumer was a prolific wizard of non sequitur and displacement, and these writings show the maturation of an absurdist conscience, applying itself to inequities of access: power, security, and meaning itself, within the confines of America and within that the contemporary professionalized writing culture.

Author Biography

Mark Baumer was a prolific writer, activist, and digital native. Born and raised in Durham, Maine, he was a graduate of the MFA program at Brown University, after which he became a "web content specialist," a climate activist, and a labor organizer in Providence, RI. A member of the group FANG (Fighting Against Natural Gas Convergence), he walked barefoot across America to draw attention to climate change. His work is continued by the Mark Baumer Sustainability Fund.

Review

The New Yorker, Jan 2017: " . . . many Americans have been searching for ways to incorporate political activism into their everyday lives, to get out of the echo chambers that keep them among only like-minded people. Baumer was an eccentric model for both, someone for whom activism was both a life style and a form of self-expression." The following introductory essay by Blake Butler is reprinted from MEOW (Burnside Review Press), the posthumously published poetry collection by the writer and activist Mark Baumer. Baumer was struck and killed by an S.U.V. in January 2017 as he walked barefoot across the U.S. to raise awareness of climate change and other issues. *** One way to introduce this posthumously released book by the beautiful enigma of Mark Baumer is to say something about how, as he lived, Mark was the writer most possessed of freedom--pure, uncompromised creative freedom--that I've probably ever read. By this I mean that the body of work he was able to produce in his heartbreakingly short time on our planet operated rigorously and overflowingly in a matter of vision unbound by convention, expectation, structure, theme, much less awards, credits, recognition; I mean how in everything he ever wrote, whether about vegetables or capitalism, office work or walking barefoot across America, from one word to another absolutely anything might happen, any inanimate entity might find a voice, through any word; to the extent that, from the outside, it seems the work of a child genius, where by child I mean the kind so unaffected by the arbitrary canonical rules that, like Barthelme or Kharms, it seems to describe a version of the world so innately absurd, so blissfully unbound, that many more restricted readers might receive it, one might say, only as might someone looking out through the security grid of our luxury panopticon at a far off and spectacular horizon slowly receding across the wide and darkened land, hearing an old friend's voice somewhere way out there in the receding gradient, saying it's okay, you will wake up soon, I am here. Mark himself might be embarrassed by my attempt at saying this; or, rather, he'd probably just look back blankly at where the words came out and start saying something about food, but then stop himself and be silent. For someone so full of vision, he always carried grace, knew when to let a moment think. Later, in a blog post on any of the countless internet locations where he published and self-published throughout his life, he might write of the experience, "An electric toaster said, 'I believe in freedom, ' and then ate so much money it fell into a coma on the longest day of the last new year." That is my poor example of the methods of casual absurdism by which Mark lived his exhaustive ongoing project of unmasking our most flat and blank realities, to reveal beneath the guise of the everyday the unrelenting sprawl of wonder and comic horror that links us all together in a human project no one understands, much less survives. It's no sort of hyperbole to me that when Mark was hit and killed by a negligent SUV driver in Walton County, Florida, in January 2017, the quotient of America's cumulative emotio-imaginative capability tipped below the holding point of modern stasis we've been living under all our lives. Only those who knew Mark at all could still detect this, despite the countless other warning signs, the sicko headlines streaming by the second through the skin that barely holds our faces together. Suddenly there was no one left to catalog the whereabouts of our meows, an intentionally impractical term Mark employs in the short, strange book you're about to read as "a complex mixture of nonvolatile substances of large mass, present in small numbers, along with volatile odor compounds which are small in mass but present in large quantities." It's okay not to have understood that, to have let it wash past you, perhaps to have read it over and again searching for mythic meaning. Like so much of Mark, it's hard to know what to do with the data derived from such supposedly surrealistically intermingled information in the present because it's from the future. It works on paper like a dream, or like a drug (another less than ideal analogy considering Mark was lifelong straight-edge, though also true in how novel language offers temporary psychological change); and still, its essential kernel contains the very sort of empathetic drive that made Mark's work feel at once so random and so alive; by example, it shows one how to see the world and all the strangers in it not as things to be feared, but to be astonished by, over and over, until the fact of existence in and of itself becomes as ridiculous and arbitrary as any trip to Whole Foods, or any corporation's efforts to appear human; or, most of all, as any sentence's desire to predict sense. In this context, what remains of Mark and in the thankful mass of language his human body has left behind is a display of overwhelming unobstructed love, another word we often misplace the meaning of, but herein felt inexplicably in MEOW 's shapeshifting narrator's frank descriptions of one's dentist finding "comfort and peace in rubbing his fingers on teeth" while "as soon as one of his hands reaches inside a person's mouth" simultaneously being "able to recall their entire dental history"; love in writing a novel or series or whatever this is that begins, "Hey, it's Bobo, the pregnant meat-eating bear," and then never mentioning Bobo again after that piece; love in challenging one's self to learn to see the world in a way that no one else would have the heart for, even in darkness; in throwing one's self into the impossible, because you can, because what else is life for but such wonder. --Blake Butler

Review Quote

The New Yorker, Jan 2017: " . . . many Americans have been searching for ways to incorporate political activism into their everyday lives, to get out of the echo chambers that keep them among only like-minded people. Baumer was an eccentric model for both, someone for whom activism was both a life style and a form of self-expression."The following introductory essay by Blake Butler is reprinted from MEOW (Burnside Review Press), the posthumously published poetry collection by the writer and activist Mark Baumer. Baumer was struck and killed by an S.U.V. in January 2017 as he walked barefoot across the U.S. to raise awareness of climate change and other issues.***One way to introduce this posthumously released book by the beautiful enigma of Mark Baumer is to say something about how, as he lived, Mark was the writer most possessed of freedom--pure, uncompromised creative freedom--that I''ve probably ever read. By this I mean that the body of work he was able to produce in his heartbreakingly short time on our planet operated rigorously and overflowingly in a matter of vision unbound by convention, expectation, structure, theme, much less awards, credits, recognition; I mean how in everything he ever wrote, whether about vegetables or capitalism, office work or walking barefoot across America, from one word to another absolutely anything might happen, any inanimate entity might find a voice, through any word; to the extent that, from the outside, it seems the work of a child genius, where by child I mean the kind so unaffected by the arbitrary canonical rules that, like Barthelme or Kharms, it seems to describe a version of the world so innately absurd, so blissfully unbound, that many more restricted readers might receive it, one might say, only as might someone looking out through the security grid of our luxury panopticon at a far off and spectacular horizon slowly receding across the wide and darkened land, hearing an old friend''s voice somewhere way out there in the receding gradient, saying it''s okay, you will wake up soon, I am here.Mark himself might be embarrassed by my attempt at saying this; or, rather, he''d probably just look back blankly at where the words came out and start saying something about food, but then stop himself and be silent. For someone so full of vision, he always carried grace, knew when to let a moment think. Later, in a blog post on any of the countless internet locations where he published and self-published throughout his life, he might write of the experience, "An electric toaster said, ''I believe in freedom,'' and then ate so much money it fell into a coma on the longest day of the last new year." That is my poor example of the methods of casual absurdism by which Mark lived his exhaustive ongoing project of unmasking our most flat and blank realities, to reveal beneath the guise of the everyday the unrelenting sprawl of wonder and comic horror that links us all together in a human project no one understands, much less survives.It''s no sort of hyperbole to me that when Mark was hit and killed by a negligent SUV driver in Walton County, Florida, in January 2017, the quotient of America''s cumulative emotio-imaginative capability tipped below the holding point of modern stasis we''ve been living under all our lives. Only those who knew Mark at all could still detect this, despite the countless other warning signs, the sicko headlines streaming by the second through the skin that barely holds our faces together. Suddenly there was no one left to catalog the whereabouts of our meows, an intentionally impractical term Mark employs in the short, strange book you''re about to read as "a complex mixture of nonvolatile substances of large mass, present in small numbers, along with volatile odor compounds which are small in mass but present in large quantities." It''s okay not to have understood that, to have let it wash past you, perhaps to have read it over and again searching for mythic meaning. Like so much of Mark, it''s hard to know what to do with the data derived from such supposedly surrealistically intermingled information in the present because it''s from the future. It works on paper like a dream, or like a drug (another less than ideal analogy considering Mark was lifelong straight-edge, though also true in how novel language offers temporary psychological change); and still, its essential kernel contains the very sort of empathetic drive that made Mark''s work feel at once so random and so alive; by example, it shows one how to see the world and all the strangers in it not as things to be feared, but to be astonished by, over and over, until the fact of existence in and of itself becomes as ridiculous and arbitrary as any trip to Whole Foods, or any corporation''s efforts to appear human; or, most of all, as any sentence''s desire to predict sense.In this context, what remains of Mark and in the thankful mass of language his human body has left behind is a display of overwhelming unobstructed love, another word we often misplace the meaning of, but herein felt inexplicably in MEOW ''s shapeshifting narrator''s frank descriptions of one''s dentist finding "comfort and peace in rubbing his fingers on teeth" while "as soon as one of his hands reaches inside a person''s mouth" simultaneously being "able to recall their entire dental history"; love in writing a novel or series or whatever this is that begins, "Hey, it''s Bobo, the pregnant meat-eating bear," and then never mentioning Bobo again after that piece; love in challenging one''s self to learn to see the world in a way that no one else would have the heart for, even in darkness; in throwing one''s self into the impossible, because you can, because what else is life for but such wonder.--Blake Butler

Excerpt from Book

Stock Tips for All the Unpublished Authors Trying to Get Rich1. I''m a very experienced stock market analyst. Just the other day, I was eating free croutons at the salad bar inside my local Wal-Mart (WMT:$86.79).2. Even though gasoline prices are down, almost every unpublished author in America is extremely poor and depressed.3. Did you see that tweet (TWTR: $35.75) about the guy eating grapes who got so depressed he took a picture of the grape stems when he was done with all the grapes?4. Even though I''m an unpublished author, I am almost rich enough to be happy.5. It took me a long time to figure this out, but the stock market isn''t like scrabble. In fact, even if you do a double word bonus on your scrabble board your financial portfolio will not get any of those points.6. Most published authors probably don''t need any financial advice because they already have six million free croutons in their bank account.7. Technically, I''ve made zero dollars from my investments.8. In fact, since I began investing three weeks ago, my portfolio is down nine dollars and two cents.9. The first thing you need to know about buying stocks is that you''re not in high school anymore ... unless you''re young enough to still be in high school. In that case, congratulations, you haven''t done anything with your life yet.10. One really interesting thing to remember about stock prices is that a stock price is also an approximation of how many people own that stock. For example, the stock price for krispy kreme donuts (KKD) is $19.83 which means about 19.83 people own KKD stock. This is the reason why google (GOOGL) stock is so expensive. About 534.23 people own GOOGL stock.11. If I was a severely depressed unpublished author, I would probably steal my dad''s bank account information and invest all his money in Wendy''s/Arby''s stock (WEN: $9.16) then I would stand outside every Burger King (BKW: $35.80) in America and handout directions to the nearest Wendy''s/Arby''s store.12. High school was a weird time for all unpublished authors, but you can make up for all that weirdness if you just invest enough money in the stock market.13. The people who own stock in Caterpillar (CAT: $92.70) don''t even have to like caterpillars or cats. All they have to do is pay the insect queen.14. I''m still not quite sure what happens to everyone''s money while it''s invested, but I have a feeling it all gets put in a special cloud. That''s why acid rain used to turn my mom''s hair green when she showered. Luckily, wall street fixed their clouds and they''re no longer lined with copper.15. One special perk of owning Starbucks stock (SBUX) is you can go to any Starbucks location and buy coffee at no extra charge. You literally pay the exact same amount as anyone else who doesn''t own Starbucks stock.16. To get rich in the stock market you just have to figure out what company is going to win the best.17. I bet all the companies in the world have secret laboratories.18. And probably, right now, most of those secret laboratories are trying to figure out how to invent a technique of harvesting poop and then converting it into food that can be resold to everyone.19. Sort of like Ebay (EBAY: $57.21).20. But if I were going to put my money on anyone successfully achieving a marketable poop to mouth service, the easy choice would be Yum! Brands (YUM: $73.32) and its warehouse of taco bell, kfc, and pizza hut. Unfortunately, it''s not really an affordable investment strategy for unpublished authors which is weird because whenever I go into a taco bell or kfc its always filled with nothing but unpublished authors.21. Also worth noting, whether or not you are still in high school, the stock market doesn''t care. All it cares about is turning two chicken nuggets into three chicken nuggets.22. If it were up to me I would let Sprint (S: $4.10) win the best because their stock is really cheap. We should all buy a share of Sprint then if it wins we each get a million dollars.23. The really sad thing is there once was a perfect stock for unpublished authors.24. But then it got bought out by another company who was then also bought out.25. The name of this perfect investment opportunity for unpublished authors was Novell (NOVL).26. Novell was bought out in November 2010 by Attachmate at $5.85 a share.27. NOVL stock no longer exists which I guess is sort of fitting because every novel by every unpublished author probably won''t exist in a few years either.Excerpt from "Science Animal"This science was the forty-sixth volume of animal.Each member of the science received an allowance of one handmade wooden crown.An isolated element in the process of science looked at the process of science and thought, "Why?" The process of science looked at the isolated element and thought, "I don''t know."Animal diseases were found in several different farms.Restrictions were required to form new operational methods but it''s important to remember science already knew the answer.If the center of an animal was removed from a body, the center would continue to blink warmly until its love was no longer a burden.Equations containing animals were difficult.Science had very little patience for excess amounts of untrained movement.A thirty-six-year-old science and a thirty-seven-year-old science tried to determine if their results were potentially useful.During an investigation of the heart when the foot of an animal was removed the nerves remained excited and muscles contracted.Pieces of this science were not always science.It was unclear how to process the resolution of doubt.Known voltages were partially a source of conditional existence.Weather claimed it was the first science.Not Ted Cruz (Mark''s Tinder Bio)One day I will probably die of something Ichose not to acknowledge or fix.Someone once told me I belong on the moonbut until then I''ll just be alone in my room.I''m just trying to not die while swimming acrossthe universe''s great river of loneliness.Sometimes I want to put my phone in a sockand beat the internet with it.Please don''t stuff any waffles in themetaphorical gas tank attached to my neck. Statement of Plans" (as submitted in Mark''s application for a Wallace Stegner Fellowship)On July 1, 2016 I will leave Providence Rhode Island and begin running west. After about fifty or sixty days of running I will arrive on the West Coast. To accomplish this I will need to run an average of fifty miles a day. In 2010, when I walked across America in eighty-one days I walked an average of thirty miles a day. The human body was never meant to be as weak as we''ve allowed it to become. Running fifty miles a day is no more impossible than any other aspect that is the insanity of the American way of life.Once I arrive in San Francisco I will build an eight-by-eight-by-eight-foot box. This is where I will live. It should not take more than two days. The inside of the box will be outfitted with a few blankets, a spoon, a bowl, and a battery hooked to a solar panel on the roof of the box. I hope to exist in my new home with as few possessions as possible.For the next three months I will practice the same daily routine seven days a week. It will involve: waking up at four a.m., meditating for twenty minutes, writing/editing for an hour, practicing qigong, going for a jog, eating breakfast, reading for three or four hours, meditating at noon for twenty minutes, eating lunch, visiting with friends, walking, eating dinner, and falling asleep by eight p.m. Part of me would like to make a list of books I will write over these four months, but I''d rather be both flexible and open enough to take advantage of whatever ideas my new home will present to me.Over the winter break, I will travel to the top of America with a golf club and a golf ball. At the Canadian border I will begin hitting the golf ball south. I will continue to hit the golf ball until I have reached the bottom of America. After I hit the golf ball into Mexico I will return to my eight-by-eight-by-eight-foot box.In the spring I will return to my daily routine with a focus on refining it without ever becoming inflexible.When summer arrives I will either do nothing or I will do everything. A lot depends on many different variables that I can''t predict at the moment. In one scenario where I do nothing I literally will not leave my wooden box for three months. Every day a different friend will visit. I will pay someone to deliver groceries, but mostly it will be important to maintain contact with the outside world while never venturing out into it. In the opposite and very different scenario where I do everything I will either dribble a soccer ball from Oregon to Brazil or I will ride a bike across Canada with my mother.It is difficult for me to know what the fall of 2017 will bring. By this point I hope I will have accomplished enough to sort of give up on myself and begin focusing primarily on the world outside my own head. I don''t think I will ever give up refining my daily routine or my daily writing practice, but a part of me hopes I begin to worry less about my own involvement in my writing and life so I can refocus my energies on teaching others how to maximize their own work ethic. Maybe I will have a child at this point or maybe I will begin coaching middle school track. Basically, I don''t want to forget the world exists. One of my biggest regrets while I was earning my MFA was I lost contact with the rest of the world. It wasn''t until I was done with the MFA that I remembered the world existed. My goal is to never forget things exist.This poem was rejected by "a public space"the milk / on the stairs / had dried / it weighed / enough / to be / too much / a five hundred pound milk / we did not / own enough equipment / or / carpet / someone tried calling / the police / but / their equipment / was violent / instead / we built / a hole / in the ice / pond / and / climbed down / the hole / it seemed unlikely / the carpet /

Description for Sales People

This book will appeal to millennials and younger, especially in college towns and in regions with a strong MFA writing culture. The author had substantial social media presence and an article appeared about his death in the New Yorker in early 2017. His writing is in the vein of what is sometimes called "alt lit" in that it is deadpan, absurdist, sometimes seemingly vacuous or inane, yet at heart quite personal and poignant. The editors are well-known millennial fiction writers in their own right and have substantial followings, especially Blake Butler, whose novel Vincent Alice and Alice is coming out this spring.

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