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Jenny Boully
[one love affair]*

ISBN 0-9779019-0-4
Fiction/ Poetry/ Lyric Essay
5" x 7", perfectbound, 76 pages
April 2006
$12 includes shipping in the US

- click here to order
- click here for the handbound edition of [one love affair]*

[one love affair]* meditates on mud daubers, Duras, and the deaths of mentally ill and drug-addicted lovers, blurring fiction, essay, and memoir in an extended prose poem that is as much a study of how we read as it is a treatise on the language of love affairs: a language of hidden messages, coded words, cryptic gestures, and suspicion.

As with Jenny Boully's debut book The Body (2002), [one love affair]* is full of gaps and fissures and "seduces its reader by drawing unexpected but felicitous linkages between disparate citations from the history of literature," a work that is "filled with the exegetical projection of our own imagination" (Christian Bok, Maisonneuve). Told through fragments that accrete through uncertain meanings, romanticized memories, and fleeting moments rather than clear narrative or linear time, [one love affair]* explores the spaces between too much and barely enough, fecundity and decay, the sublime and the disgusting, wholeness and emptiness, love and loneliness in a world where life can be interpreted as a series of love affairs that are "unwilling to complete."

About Jenny Boully

Jenny Boully is the author of The Book of Beginnings and Endings (Sarabande, 2007), [one love affair]* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2006), and The Body (Essay Press, 2007; Slope Editions, 2002). Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2002, Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, and The Next American Essay and has appeared in Boston Review, Seneca Review, Tarpaulin Sky, and Conjunctions. Born in Thailand and reared in Texas, she has studied at Hollins University and the University of Notre Dame and is pursuing a Ph.D. at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She divides her time between Brooklyn and a small town in Texas.

Awards for [one love affair]*

Winner of two awards from Coldfront: Best Book-Length Poem and Best First Lines. Nominated for three other awards from Coldfront: Best New Book of the Year, Best Second Book, and Best Technical Innovation.

Reviews of [one love affair]*

"A genre-bending back-pocket book. . . . Gritty and intellectual . . . addictive and soothing . . . fitting for just about anyone’s bookshelf. . . . You’re reading the book for second, third, and fourth time."
--Full review in Coldfront, written by John Deming.

"Boully’s fluid, lyrical writing makes what could be a difficult, intimidating read instead a delightful one. . . . Playful engagement with narrative levels of reality (poems within poems, stories within stories). I highly recommend it, especially if you’re looking for a way into the “trans-genre” of prose poetry."
-- Full review in Open Letters Monthly, written by Elisa Gabbert.

"Her fresh style challenges the ways in which we construct narratives and read texts . . . and ultimately leaves us wanting more, more, always more Boully."
--Full review in Matrix, written by Catherine Paquette.

"Boully has not only written the speaker’s one love affair, she has written our collective love affair. "
--Full review in CutBank Poetry, written by Michael Rerick.

"Boully’s language is accretive and lyrical. It is clear, feels clean in the mouth and sweet in the ear. . . . One begins to feel there another form embedded within the prose, though not a poetic form as much as the formed outline of a lover’s body, a book one has loved, one lover in a line of lovers, lying in the same bed as the former others."
--Full review in Galatea Resurrects, written by Teresa Carmody.

"Aside from the value of her incidental observations and asides, which are as sharp and well-made here as they are in The Body, the greatest virtue of [one love affair]* is Boully’s willingness to admit the personal and the narrative in such a way that doesn’t reinforce those very errors that make heartbreak in actual (if there is such a thing) love affairs inevitable."
--Full review in Constant Critic, written by Ray McDaniel

Also noted . . .

- in Kristi Maxwell's blog, oar
     - part 1
     - part 2
- in Artvoice, written by Peter Conners
- in Simon DeDeo's blog, Rhubarb Is Susan

Interviews with Jenny Boully

Readings & events for Jenny Boully & [one love affair]*

upcoming . . .

July 1, 2008: New York, NY
Jenny Boully, Gregory Pardlo, and G.C. Waldrep
Poetry from the Rooftops
Sponsored by Academy of American Poets and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

6:30 p.m. @ the Arsenal Building at Central Park
64th Street at 5th Avenue (next to the Zoo)
FREE
Please call 212.360.1324 or email rsvp[at]parks.nyc.gov to reserve your free ticket.

past . . .

April 4, 2008: Las Cruces, NM
Jenny Boully
Noemi Press Reading
New Mexico State University

March 6, 2008: Roanoke, VA
Jenny Boully
Hollins University

December 17, 2007: New York, NY
Jenny Boully
KGB Bar Great American Prose Poems reading
85 E. 4th Street, 2nd Floor

December 12, 2007: New York, NY
Jenny Boully, release party for The Book of Beginnings & Endings
5-8 pm @ Baruch College.
137 East 25th St., 3rd floor, room 323

November 20, 2007: New York, NY
Jenny Boully w/Patsy Vigderman
McNally Robinson Booksellers
52 Prince St. (between Lafayette and Mulberry)

November 15, 2007: Geneva, NY
Jenny Boully
Hobart & William Smith Colleges
Seneca Review reading, in memory of Deborah Tall

November 1, 2007: IA
Jenny Boully
1:45-3:15 pm
NonFictioNOW Conference
Univeristy of Iowa

February 17, 2007: New York, NY
TARPAULIN SKY AUTHORS & FRIENDS
Jenny Boully, Jordan Davis, Douglas A. Martin, & Max Winter
2 PM @ The Four-Faced Liar
165 West 4th Street (between 6th & 7th Ave)
Christopher Street (1, 9) and West 4th St. subway (F, V, A, C, E, F, V, B, D)
(212) 366 0608

October 24, 2006: New York, NY
NEW SCHOOL FACULTY READING SERIES
featuring Jenny Boully
6:30 pm @ The New School
66 W. 12th Street, Room 510

October 22, 2006: New York, NY
ZINC TALK/READING SERIES
Jenny Boully & Travis Nichols
7PM @ the Zinc Bar
90 West Houston (btwn Laguardia & Thompson)
[Zinc Talk/Readings website]

September 29, 2006: Brooklyn, NY
MIPO READING SERIES
Aaron Belz, Jenny Boully, and Brian Howe
7PM @ the Stain Bar
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
[MiPo Readings website]

May 10, 2006: New York, NY
BOOK RELEASE PARTY / READING
FOR JENNY BOULLY'S [ONE LOVE AFFAIR]*
6:30--to 8:30 @ the Faculty Lounge, Hunter College
8th floor, West building
68th Street & Lexington Ave

October 8, 2005: New York, NY
TARPAULIN SKY / FREQUENCY SERIES
Jenny Boully, Jan Clausen, and Sasha Watson
2PM @ The Four-Faced Liar
165 West 4th Street (between 6th & 7th Ave)