Moveable Types

by Jenny Boully

Jenny Boully's chapbook argues for narratives that are built of fragments, excisions and the indexical imprint of memory.

40 pages, Chapbook

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Jenny Boully is the author of four books, most recently not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them (Tarpaulin Sky Press). Her other books include The Books of Beginnings and Endings (Sarabande Books), [one love affair]* (Tarpaulin Sky Press), and The Body: An Essay (Essay Press, first published by Slope Editions). Her chapbook of prose,Moveable Types, was released by Noemi Press. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry, The Next American Essay, Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, and other places. Born in Thailand, she was reared in Texas by parents who farm and fish. She attended Hollins University, where she double majored in English and philosophy and then went on to earn her MA in English Criticism and Writing. At the University of Notre Dame, she earned an MFA with a poetry concentration. She earned a Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She lives in Chicago, Illinois with her husband and daughter and teaches at Columbia College Chicago.

Reviews

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd been hunting for this chapbook for years when finally I decided to reach out to Jenny herself and see if she had an extra lying around. She graciously sent it to me, and I devoured it. If she wasn't there already (and, duh, she was), this book puts Jenny Boully in the upper upper echelon of writers who matter the most to me.

“If the bedroom can be likened to a metatextual land of signs and symbols, then I should hope to never rely solely on twenty-six characters with which to move and manipulate, meaning: I only desire one lover, yet I also desire to have infinite possibilities with this lover. Bodies arrange themselves next to one another as if on a printing block, awaiting the turn of the screw, the downward force of a lever to cause the meeting of ink and paper. In the act of lovemaking, two bodies link to form infinite ideograms and phonetic possibilities that are invented only then and never set into type, never committed to memory.”