Nonlinear accelerator

ORIGINAL BOLSHEVIK NADEZHADA Krupskaya's claim to historical fame may be that she was Lenin's wife, but by the time the October Revolution rocked Russia, the radical activist and prolific scribe had already produced more than 40 publications.

Krupskaya's name rages on in the form of the local experimental writing press founded by local poet and curator Jocelyn Saidenberg and collectively operated by a community of nonlinear writers. "It's so hard to name things," Saidenberg muses from Krupskaya Press's office in the suitably radical Redstone Building (once the San Francisco Labor Temple, now home to arts organizations such as the Lab). "I like the idea of naming things after people. Krupskaya is the name of a forgotten person, and that was part of the appeal. Who was this Bolshevik revolutionary who worked with libraries and in schools?"

Krupskaya is a great moniker for a press publishing nonlinear writings that often read like mystery itself, politically infused codes impossible to crack, best simply submitted to in the way one submits to a David Lynch film. In the words of Krupskaya author and former editor Rodrigo Toscano, lifted from his collection To Leveling Swerve, "Though you will understand very little of what is written here you will nonetheless grow obsessed with the very look and feel of these words."

For readers who cling to linear narrative, immersing yourself in Krupskaya's brightly designed volumes can feel like becoming lost in an endlessly replicating linguistic fun house. But as you sink deeper into the text, moods emerge, snaring you with their hypnotic rhythms, frequently whacking you over the head with unexpected humor. From Krupskaya editor Kevin Killian's diaristic, operatic "Perche Quelle Strane Gocce di Sangue sul Corpo di Jennifer?," published in the collection Argento Series: Or is this what the original text looks like? "Imaginary Frenchman with/bright red coat and small cap. And what is/with Madonna's new Ray of Light/pre-Raphaelite processed hair, all that/scalp showing in between? It/feels like a New England hurricane's/blowing in, the sultry, expanding/air almost bursting with mist, but hot,/sweaty, the dishes won't dry."

Brought onto Krupskaya's cast of rotating editors in 2001, Killian will continue to be Saidenberg's collaborator on the press into the future.

"Jocelyn has always had a commitment, as I understand it, to publish gays and lesbians and people of color and the people who get submerged in the world of experimental poetry, which is really white and straight," he says.

"My grandfather died and left me some money," Saidenberg says when describing the press's genesis, back in 1998. "And I was at a point where I wanted to do that kind of work for the community." She enlisted the editorial help of other poets – Hung Q. Tu, Norma Cole, Dan Farrell, and Judith Goldman, in addition to Toscano and Killian – who did two-year shifts reading and selecting manuscripts, as well as preparing their own commissions. "The process and the people involved and how we worked together engaged our politics," Saidenberg says. "It truly is a collective."

Krupskaya recently took a year off to regroup, changing its submissions cycle from seasonal to year-round. "Everyone would send in manuscripts in the summer, a hundred, a hundred and fifty manuscripts," Killian says, shaking his head.

"It's hard," Saidenberg concurs. "One day you're just in a really shitty mood and you miss it, so it's really great having three readers. And Kevin is probably the most catholic of them all. He actually reads every page of every manuscript."

Though Saidenberg claims to have put the press on hiatus for the past year, there was still activity: the publishing of editor Norma Cole's CD, Scout. About the editors' commissions, Saidenberg says, "It's an invitation to do something you might not have done, a different kind of thing. So we decided to do [Cole's] this project, but we'd never done a CD-ROM project before." The finished product, freshly delivered, sits boxed on a wooden work table. Saidenberg and Killian pop the disc into my computer to take a peek. Cole's soft, metered voice lulls you with a poetic autobiography. "Public schools were named after war heroes," she recounts. "You could also name your cat after one. Identity politics." As the text is read, a slide show of snapshots is flashed across the screen: the suburbs in winter, great mounds of snow lumped high at the curb. Hearing the work is a bittersweet moment for the pair, as the poet suffered a stroke during production and is struggling to regain speech and movement.

"Norma was one of the great stars of the poet theater," Saidenberg says. "A totally restrained powerhouse on the stage."

Krupskaya publications are available through Small Press Distribution, and the press is committed to a grassroots, word-of-mouth style of promotion. "We just really want the books to be out there and be read," Saidenberg says.